Cancelling Christmas and the Plum Pudding Riots Artwork

Almost History

Almost History. Always incredible. What if ... ? Almost History tells the amazing true stories behind the aborted missions, cancelled plans, utopian dreams, failed revolutions and hubristic designs that didn't quite make it from the drawing board to change the real world. Rescued from the footnotes, archives and passing references, each episode explores what almost happened and explains why it didn't.

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Almost History

Cancelling Christmas and the Plum Pudding Riots

May 11, 2017 • Ian Chapman-Curry • Season 1 • Episode 8

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In 1647, the new puritan government tried to cancel Christmas.

People in Canterbury protested in a peculiarly English way, with a destructive game of football followed by a mass brawl.

The city’s Plum Pudding Riots led to a royalist revolt throughout Kent and the second round of the Civil War.

With Parliamentary armies fighting in Wales and Scotland, could this have marked a revival in fortunes for the beleaguered King Charles the First?

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Music credits

The theme music is Newsroom by Riot.

The other music featured in this episode was Air Hockey Saloon by Chris Zabriskie (http://chriszabriskie.com) and Sacred Motion by staRpauSe (http://starpause.flavors.me/). Both are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)